


Truth Between The Lines

by Dikhotomia



Series: Whumptober 2k19: FE3H Edition [9]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Day 9 Shackled, Edelgard is not the nicest person in this fic, Emotional Manipulation, F/F, Hand Feeding, Interrogation, but she's not awful like Thales either, this got away from me ohgod, with a dollop of sexual tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 22:35:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21005264
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dikhotomia/pseuds/Dikhotomia
Summary: "I wasn't expecting you back in Enbarr until next week," Thales says finally, straightening, hands hidden behind his back. She's seen all she needs to, eyes flicking slow back to where he stands, confident but nervous all the same.He's not sure who it is who holds the leash anymore.Edelgard smiles a smile that is more threat then warmth, patient and warning. "The battle ended much quicker than we anticipated, Adrestia's territory grows." Another lord, another plot of land seized. Heads bowed and soldiers added to the ranks of an already expansive army. She has become the conqueror, keeping the promises she made to the people who joined her cause five years ago."ORThat one in which Rhea and Edelgard actually talk, Albeit on Edelgard's terms.





	Truth Between The Lines

**Author's Note:**

> I fell into a hole with this one and I don't know what happened. It's a spin off of another AU idea that I might eventually do something with.

"What are you doing." It's not framed as a question, the sentence ending as cold and flat as it began. Thales freezes, the human mask he wears in public as her uncle looking wrong with the expression he wears. His normal face would look comical, the surprise, the child caught doing something he shouldn't flash in his eyes.

Edelgard stills at the entrance way to the cell, attention fixed on him. Rhea coughs below them, hunched over and fixing them both with a glare that could have struck a lesser man dead. But Edelgard isn't a man, and Thales is too cold blooded already. Her lip twitches once in a not smile, eyebrow raising. "You're not abusing our prisoner are you?" This time her tone curls despite the acid in it, dripping cold and biting. Her attention is finally drawn by the wheeze in Rhea's breath, fixing on the smear of blood on her lips.

_Done in a way she (ideally) wouldn't notice._

"I wasn't expecting you back in Enbarr until next week," Thales says finally, straightening, hands hidden behind his back. She's seen all she needs to, eyes flicking slow back to where he stands, confident but nervous all the same.

He's not sure who it is who holds the leash anymore.

Edelgard smiles a smile that is more threat then warmth, patient and warning. "The battle ended much quicker than we anticipated, Adrestia's territory grows." Another lord, another plot of land seized. Heads bowed and soldiers added to the ranks of an already expansive army. She has become the conqueror, keeping the promises she made to the people who joined her cause five years ago.

"And Garreg Mach?" He asks, bringing her back with an inhale and raised shoulders.

"A haven for bandits."

She doesn't think of who else she saw there.

"Randolph," she says, and he's at her side in a moment, stepping up from where he and Ladislava wait in the hall, watching with the same thinly veiled resentment she feels.

"Bring the prisoner to my sitting room." He steps by her with a nod and Rhea rises like a venomous beast poised to strike, shackle clanging as she hits the end of the chain. Edelgard turns away to the jingle of keys, footfalls ringing off the stone as she leaves, Ladislava falling into step behind her.

\-----------

"I did not speak to your uncle, what makes you believe you will have better luck?"

The question comes as Edelgard shuts the door behind her, lock sliding into place with a finality that sets them both on edge. It's not the first time they've spoken, arguments through cell bars and Rhea's hands on her collar, pulling her in close enough to see the way her canines curved into deadly points. But it's the first time they have in at least four years, her campaign taking her away from Enbarr and giving her little time to herself even when she returned.

"Because I have a few things you want," she replies as she makes her way into the room, past where Rhea kneels, chained securly to the floor. "And I believe we have a common enemy." She's known Rhea without knowing her, the kindness hiding her half truths. She's known Rhea while knowing the truth of what she was. Could see it now on display in the scowl and the pointed edges of an ear exposed by the part of her hair.

Had seen it in the Dragon that rained hell down upon her forces until they had rendered her bloody and broken.

"What could you possibly have that I would want, Hresvelg?" The words are spit at her, dripping with the same acid Edelgard had aimed at Thales hours before. Rhea's anger is a relief from the false veneer of kindness and Edelgard enjoys stirring it up, seeing the beast that hides underneath the layered facade of the Archbishop. It sings to her own like a siren to wayward sailors. Never fails to make it rise and press against the cage of her bones. It's no different now, cloak draped over the back of her chosen chair before she sits in it, legs crossed and cheek rested against splayed fingers.

"For one information about the Professor."

The anger dissipates into shock then suspicion, Rhea's eyes narrowing to slits, lip curling over those too sharp teeth. "Is this some kind of joke?" She hisses, metal groaning under the strain of hidden muscle. "You--how dare you--"

"She's alive."

The silence is_ deafening._

She watches the argument that rages behind the blank expression frozen on the Archbishop's face, clearly trying to decide if Edelgard was lying to throw her off balance or telling the truth. But it doesn't matter, because if she had been lying her plan would have worked, because the foundation the other woman had built herself was crumbling. "It's the truth," she provides after the silence stretches on long enough something underneath her skin begins to itch and make her uncomfortable.

"I saw her at the Goddess tower, I tried to convince her to return with me..." She let's Rhea see her pain, watches the realization twist ugly and smug on the other's features.

The Professor hadn't joined her five years ago, why would she now?

The hesitation had hurt more than an outright denial.

"But she wouldn't," Rhea finishes, and there's something in her voice Edelgard doesn't expect. Something she can't put a finger on, that picks away at the itch still prickling at the tips of her fingers. It's not elation, it's not pity. It's not even a mockery of the projected patience and concern she'd been given before.

"No." She reaches for the jug of wine sitting at the center of the table, pouring some of it into the goblet that sits by her elbow. "I wasn't surprised, it just means things will be..." she trails off, exchanging the jug for her goblet and a long sip. "Much harder from here on."

Rhea watches her with parted lips and this time Edelgard doesn't need to try and guess what she's thinking, the desire open and unashamed. The four years she'd been away hadn't been kind to the older woman, and really looking at her she can see it. The starvation that had eaten away at her frame, making her gaunt and pale yet still terrifyingly strong somehow.

Bent but never broken.

"What of our common enemy?" Rhea murmurs, low enough Edelgard almost misses it.

"You tell me," she replies, rising from her seat and crossing to where Rhea still kneels. There's a part of her that whispers warning, that tells her to put herself at this distance puts her at risk of teeth at the vulnerable spit underneath her jaw where her armor doesn't protect. She bends down anyway, meeting those mint green eyes from a scant foot away. "Your vitriol the last we spoke was something to behold."

Rhea had spoken from a place of anger instead of her usual calculation, grip keeping her pinned hard against the bars of her cell. Now they're at a similar distance, but Edelgard holds the advantage in all forms. The power tipped entirely in her favor.

"Those people," Rhea starts, eyes dipping to the goblet Edelgard still holds. Too proud to ask for the drink she so desperately wants. "Who you work with, what do you call them?" She had seen Thales in both forms, true and the mask he always presented to the public; a nightmare in both.

"Those Who Slither in The Dark," Edelgard replies, fingertips pressing to the floor to keep her balance. "They integrated themselves into Adrestia when I was too young to do anything about them." She gives the tiny bits and pieces of information in hopes of maybe prying something out of Rhea in return. She won't give anything too personal until Rhea speaks on the matter herself.

She doesn't like her, doesn't trust her, but she dislikes Thales and his ilk even more.

"What do you know of them?"

Edelgard's jaw ticks and she leans back on her heels. "Very little. I'm using them as much as they're using me." Another grain, but one that's now fairly well known with her identity as the Flame Emperor still hanging in the room between them.

"Why?" Whispered, Rhea's confusion alive and real on her features. "If you know nothing of them why work with them?"

"Our goals aligned, in part." It's not a matter of choice. She doesn't say. "But I don't trust them, I never did. The thing is..." she trails off to take another drink, chasing the excess wine on her lips with her tongue. "I don't trust you either. I know what you are, _who_ you are...but there's so much else about you I don't know."

Rhea's jaw works, then tenses, muscles shifting. Eyes gauging once again, searching her face for the intention behind her words.

"To me you're both my enemy," Edelgard speaks to fill the silence again. "But I only know a singular side of the story. And I've begun to wonder if it's even the truth."

"You have...a much greater plan than I originally believed," Rhea murmurs, realization dawning in the subtle widening of her eyes.

"I have to, because I know Those Who Slither have their own. I plan to unify Fódlan against the church, then dismantle the crest system."

"You can't possibly hope-"

She cuts Rhea off with a finger to her lips. "It will take time but it will happen. I will make it happen. But before that I'll use the power of the crests to take down Those Who Slither for good. Just like I'm sure they plan to stab me in the back as soon as I've finished unifying Fódlan under the Adrestian flag once again."

"So I'm to play your scapegoat."

"You did a lovely job of it, all those people that saw the Immaculate One at work. I hardly needed to lift a finger for some of them, word spreads like wildfire. There are those that still support you, those that would see you back in power instead of me. But there are those who are terrified of you now."

Rhea's grimace is full bodied, cringing and curling in on herself.

"I know you didn't plan to survive that encounter, flinging yourself at us so the students had time to escape. It was admirable."

It was terrifying.

Devastating.

"I have one last question," Rhea starts, meeting her eyes again. "Why capture me?"

"'I want you to watch.' Is what I would have said five years ago. I want the truth is my answer now." I want your help. Is something she thinks but immediately pushes aside with a harshness that rises hot and poisonous in her chest. "Talk to me, Rhea, and I'll give you what else you want."

Food. Drink. Both of which she had in easy supply.

_Freedom._

She gets up, returning to the table and her chair, refilling her goblet and picking up the tray of fruit that had been left ignored until now.

Ladislava must have known what she was planning.

She carries each over, goblet and tray set just out of reach, chair set beside and she sits back in it, close enough Rhea bumps her knee every time she moves.

"You don't know what I really want."

Edelgard plucks a grape loose, not missing how Rhea again watches as she eats it, throat bobbing and a glare trickling in through the confines of her attempted neutrality. She sees her hunger.

"I know they haven't been feeding you very well while I've been gone. _Talk_."

She sees the exact moment Rhea breaks, the way her shoulders fall and her head lowers, teeth clenched hard enough Edelgard can hear the grind of her teeth. Then she talks, stare blank and set at a point at her collarbone. She tells her a story similar to the one Thales did, but from the point of view of the other side. The truth.

She talks of her people, the Goddess Edelgard never believed in, guiding the people of Fódlan, uplifting them. Then she talks of their betrayal, the war -- the rebuilding, the massacre that makes Edelgard recoil, lips curled in a mix of disgust at Nemesis and pity for the woman behind the mask Rhea wore.

_Seiros._

She tells her the truth of the Relics, of the crests and how they came to be. The truth behind the confrontation Edelgard knew as just a dispute over territory. Instead it was for revenge, revenge for kin slain and bodies ravaged for the sake of power.

"So why?" She whispers at the end of it, when Rhea trails off with grief in her eyes.

"For peace. How do you think people would react if they knew?"

Edelgard doesn't answer, because Rhea doesn't expect one.

Instead she leans down and picks another grape, this time pressing it to Rhea's bottom lip. "Eat," she says, meeting the searching flicker of the other's eyes. "I've heard enough for now." Rhea doesn't argue, letting Edelgard push the offered fruit into her mouth, watching her carefully while she chewed.

She takes the second grape with her teeth, tension easing from them both as Edelgard shows her form of mercy. She's careful not to catch armored fingers on dry lips just like before, holding an apple slice between them and watching as Rhea only takes half of it.

She waits.

Rhea's focus remains on the floor.

Edelgard eats the other half of the slice without a word. A peace offering? She doesn't think much on it, reaching for the goblet instead and lifting it for the other to drink, tipping it carefully, eyes set on the way her throat works as she swallows.

_Too close._

The goblet goes back on the half empty tray, drained of it's contents.

"Why the interest in the Professor?" She asks finally, elbows on her knees.

"That," Rhea starts, running her tongue over her lips. "Is a story I would rather tell in the presence of you both. She deserves to know."

She sits back with a heavy sigh. "Inevitably she will come here, or be brought here," she says, looking down at the woman so dangerously close to being seated between her legs, and she chases an errant thought away. "I will have you by my side for that confrontation, then you can tell us the rest of your story."

"So, you believe me?"

"Grief and pain like that cannot be faked," Edelgard murmurs, taking her turn at being distant. "No matter how good at lying and acting you might be, your eyes told me the same story your words did. Both of us have been wronged by the same people for different reasons. I won't stop what I'm doing, I can't. And I'm still not entirely sure I can fully trust you, but..." she trails off.

"But?"

"I ask that you wait. And then we will both have our revenge."

**Author's Note:**

> catch me on [Tumblr](http://dikhotomia.tumblr.com/) and or [Twitter!](https://twitter.com/modulatechaos)


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